Patients with oral cancer often need the cancer to be excised in order to save their lives. With people that chew betel quid leading to oral disease, oral cancer post operation, head and neck disease after radiotherapy, and special oral diseases may be unable to carry out normal opening and closing of the jaw. This seriously affects daily life and dietary intake of the patients. Therefore, persistent mouth-opening training is quite necessary during therapy. The mouth-opening training can also slow down fibrosis of muscles and development of joints stiffened. In addition, it may be necessary for the patients with other craniofacial diseases to do mouth opening and closing exercises. For example, congenital disorder of temporomandibular joint and injury of oral or craniofacial parts are common craniofacial diseases. A good mouth-opening training device is very important for these types of patients.
A mechanical rehabilitation tool for carrying out mouth opening and closing exercises, disclosed in Taiwan Patent No. M426402, has a first body and a second body, of which the tails are extending to form a first trapezoidal platform and a second trapezoidal platform, respectively. The first body and the second body are pivotably connected and are engaged with a screw thread adjusting rod. The rotation of the screw thread adjusting rod is transformed into relative displacement of the first body and the second body along axial direction, thereby moving the second trapezoidal platform toward or away from the first trapezoidal platform. In this way, the opening or closing state for the first and second trapezoidal platforms are controllable. However, this mechanical rehabilitation tool can only carry out the job of sustaining the upper and lower jaws and only has a one-way stretching ability without an elastic recovery function, therefore it is not effective to make the mouth open and close using this tool such that a slow improvement may be yield in rehabilitation. Also, this mechanical rehabilitation tool consists of many components with relatively complicated manufacturing, so the cost is high. Because of its high cost, it is a problem for patients with little money.
A mouth exercise device disclosed in Taiwan Patent No. M455497 includes a plate supporting body and a handle. The plate supporting body has an upper plate supporting portion and a lower plate supporting portion, which are connected to each other to form a ring-like body, such that an accommodating space is formed inside the plate supporting body. The handle is fastened to the plate supporting body. The accommodating space has a plurality of strengthening ribs disposed therein. Each strengthening rib has two ends which are respectively fastened to the upper plate supporting portion and the lower plate supporting portion. The strengthening ribs can support the plate supporting body and increase elastic strength in occlusion of teeth of a patient. An oral rehabilitation tool disclosed in Taiwan Patent No. 530654 has a long plate-shaped supporting body made of a material with great toughness, and more than one stress resisting elements which are plate-shaped bodies made of a rigid material such as wood, hard plastic, and metal. The plate-shaped supporting body has an accommodating portion penetrating the left and right sides thereof for accommodating the stress resisting elements. When the mouth of a patient can be opened to a certain degree, one or more stress resisting elements can be placed into the accommodating portion of the plate-shaped supporting body for increasing the cross-sectional area of the plate-shaped supporting body so as to expand an angle of an opened mouth of the patient.
An inflatable mouth opener disclosed in Taiwan Patent No. M484402 has a supporting member and an inflatable sack like device. The supporting member is an elastic member made by bending a metal plate. The supporting member has a curved end and two opposite ends. Both of the two opposite ends are perforated to form fastening holes. The inflatable sack like device is made of an elastic material, and its surface is protruded to form two engaging members and are stuck respectively into the fastening holes. In this way, the inflatable sack like device is fastened between the two opposite ends. By filling the air into or withdrawing the air from the inflatable sack like device, the spacing between the two opposite ends can be expanded or recovered again. In this way, it can be easily to insert the mouth opener between the teeth of a patient from the curved end and then fill the air into the inflatable sack like device so as to open the patient's mouth with help of air pressure for being convenient for subsequent medical treatments.
Among the above-described conventional devices, some of them use elastic or rigid supporting solid objects to adapt to or change the thickness of occlusion of the teeth of a patient while one of them utilizes air pressure to open the patient's mouth. Regardless of an elastic supporting solid object or an inflatable sack like device, a certain degree of elastic support is provided in occlusion of the teeth of the patient and the used materials also provide a certain degree of comfort for the patient. However, an improvement on layers of flavor in occlusion of the teeth of the patient is unlikely to be carried out using the conventional devices, and a patient's further demands may not be satisfied. The elasticity of the conventional supporting objects is within a certain range, and a changeless feeling is easily occurred to a patient doing the mouth opening and closing exercises. Further, the inflatable sack like device has an issue that the recovery force is hard to be controlled. Also, the inflatable mouth opener disclosed in TW M484402 is utilized to open the patient's mouth for subsequent medical treatments but is not utilized for rehabilitation of a patient's mouth opening and closing motions.
Accordingly, how to improve the above-described conventional mouth opener and solve the problems described above are important issues in related technical fields.